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Li will hold a four-year term as division chair; colleagues in
the society nominated him for the role at last year’s
division business meeting.

One of his primary responsibilities is to help plan the annual
ASPET meeting, a forum that includes scientific symposia from
invited speakers, division sessions, education and career
development sessions, award lectures and a poster competition
for students and postdoctoral scholars.

“A major part of a chair’s job is to solicit and
organize the symposia for the annual meetings and attend a
chair’s meeting each year at ASPET headquarters to decide
which symposia will be hosted by each ASPET division,”
explains Li.

Moreover, he emphasizes that he is committed to furthering
students’ growth.

“Promoting and enhancing the scientific development of
students and postdoctoral fellows in ASPET’s Division for
Behavioral Pharmacology is one goal of the division, and it is
something that I certainly will work on,” says Li.

Encouraging Trainees to Present Research

Li encourages his trainees to attend the annual ASPET meeting.
He says that conferences are an important learning and networking
opportunity for students.

“This year, we are going to have two doctoral students
presenting their research at the ASPET meeting in Chicago,”
Li says.

In addition to working with doctoral students, Li currently
mentors three master’s students and one postdoctoral fellow
in his lab.

A Decade of Membership in ASPET

Li’s appointment as chair of ASPET’s Division for
Behavioral Pharmacology is “truly an honor,” he
says.

The division serves members who investigate the way that drugs
alter behavior; it fosters scholarship and discusses recent
innovations in the field. “The division serves as the primary
channel and scientific home for hundreds of behavioral
pharmacologists,” he explains.

In 2007, Li won the society’s Young Scientist Travel
Award, and he received second place for postdoctoral poster in
2009.

Members of ASPET — a 5,000 member scientific society
— conduct basic and clinical pharmacological research and aim
to develop new medicines and therapeutic agents for existing and
emerging diseases. ASPET members work in academia as well as for
the government, large pharmaceutical companies, small biotech
companies and non-profit organizations.

Research Expertise in Pain and Stimulant Abuse

Li focuses his research on the pharmacotherapy of stimulant
abuse, and he also uses pharmacological approaches to seek novel
therapeutics for pain.

He and trainees in his lab are interested in understanding the
neurobiological crosstalk between pain and addiction. They are
developing novel behavioral procedures to simultaneously measure
pain affect and addiction-related behaviors.

Li uses behavioral pharmacological procedures to understand how
drugs work at the behavioral level. He has expertise in drug
discrimination, schedule-controlled responding, drug
self-administration, delay discounting, place conditioning,
locomotor activity and various acute and chronic pain tests.

On April 22, Li will give a talk titled “Deciphering
Imidazoline I2 Receptors: A Behavioral Approach” at the
Behavioral Pharmacology Society annual meeting, a satellite meeting
to ASPET.